Close to Home
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: Someone is killing elderly women in a small town in NY, prompting the BAU to come to the aid of the local Sharif's department, but the case hits close to home for everyone when Reid's grandmother turns up as one of the victims. To find her killer the BAU will have to color outside the lines and uncover a tangled web of lies and loyalties. Can they stop him?
1. Chapter 1

Close to Home: Chapter 1: She's Gone

It was an unusually sweltering spring night in DC when Spencer Reid arrived home at his apartment. He sighed at the sight of the familiar green walls and built-in bookshelves. It was the end of a particularly long day.

It had been another long day of paperwork, catching up on the reports they had little time to complete while the cases were actually going on. Normally, he would've liked a good paper trail…he was just about the only one on the team who did. But all day he'd been restless, eager for something to happen…no…that wasn't right. It was more like some part of him, something deep within him that even he couldn't put words to, seemed to sense that something had already happened, and just wanted his conscious mind to wake up to that fact. That part of him waited, for what had seemed like an eternity, for the other shoe to drop so that there would be a name, and a description to put to this thing that had happened. It never had, but he felt…strangely on edge, like something, though he didn't know what, was somehow off, as if the universe had shifted. Something had changed in the aura of the world, if you believed in that stuff and he wasn't sure he did. Maybe he was just bored and exhausted… yeah …that had to be it. Doing paperwork for ten hours could be mind-numbing, especially when you had an IQ of 187 and had seen all this information previously. There was no intellectual stimulation in that, nothing for his overactive mind to sink its teeth into.

He shook his head, turned on the lights in the darkened living room, tossed his messenger bag on the couch and took a shower. It wasn't until he came out, having exchanged his work clothes for sweatpants and a T-shirt, that he noticed there were six new messages on his home answering machine.

He went to push the button to play them, but as he did this the phone rang again. He picked it up.

"Hello?" he said.

"Spencer…finally, I've been trying to get ahold of you all day…" said a familiar voice. It was Don, his grandmother's best friend and in many ways a surrogate for the grandfather he had never known.

"What is it? You never call just to catch up, and even if you did you wouldn't be this persistent…what's going on? Is Nana on her way here to 'surprise' me again?" He asked.

"No Spencer…" the old man replied, there was something there, a sadness…a lamenting in his voice that Reid was picking up on, and part of him understood then what had really prompted this phone call, though he wasn't prepared to face it until he heard Don say the words.

"I…I don't know that there is a good way to say this, so I'm just going to say it…she…she's gone Spencer…she's dead…."

The news hit him like a ton of bricks, and for a moment, Spencer couldn't breathe. He sunk into a chair. Nana had been the one dependable adult in his life growing up, in some ways she was more of a mother to him than her daughter was… now she was gone… He knew that Don would never lie to him about something like this…but it didn't seem possible. It wasn't quite real yet. Nana had been old, that was true, she'd been in her mid-eighties, but she hadn't ever seemed to lose any significant amount of energy or mobility. She had been the kind of person who looked, moved, and acted like someone fifteen to twenty years younger than their real age. So how had she died?

"W-when did this happen…?"

"Around seven am this morning, I went over to her place around eight-thirty to return a casserole dish and the front door was knocked halfway off its hinges. I found her inside."

"There were signs of forced entry?" he asked.

"Yes…and a struggle too… the living room and the foyer were all but destroyed. Spencer, I'm so sorry about all this, I know that this is a lot but I wanted to make sure you heard it from me before…"

"Before what?"

"You…may be getting another phone call about this…from a…different perspective… she's not the first one this has happened to. There have been others in the past couple of weeks… and Sharif Conwell has requested assistance from the Bureau. I can't say for sure whether or not it'll be your people of course but I wouldn't be surprised."

Don was right, even as they spoke, his cellphone vibrated with a text message from Garcia telling him to get back to the office ASAP. His mind raced, his heart hammered with charged and mixed emotions. He was caught between the shock and heartbreak at his grandmother's death, and the rising desire to hunt down and punish the unsub who had taken her from him.

But in all likelihood, his undeniable emotional involvement would have him taken off the case almost immediately, and if he didn't admit he knew one of the victims, it would only get him in more trouble since they were bound to look into her extended family as they worked on victimology and family notifications. It seemed the only logical option was to go back to work, explain in person and make his case for why he should be allowed on the case.

"Spencer…are you still there? Hello?"

"Don, I'll see you by morning probably, one way or another I'll be up there as soon as I can." Reid replied, then he hung up and got dressed, grabbed his go-bag, and left.

When he got to the BAU, he didn't say a word. After all, maybe the case had nothing to do with Nana and he could just tell Hotch what happened and attend her funeral. He sat down in the conference room like usual, though his hands were shaking and he was failing at trying to hide the fact that there was something wrong, he kept his head down because if he met a single one of the other six pairs of eyes, not only would they see the pain written all over his face but he was liable to break down completely.

Garcia stood up and took the remote. "Ok my family, tonight you are off to Mt. Bedford, it's a tiny outpost of a town in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. That's because, in the last two weeks, a town which doesn't have a single murder case on record has had five homicides. All of the victims were elderly women, aged seventy-five and older and they were all longtime residents." She clicked a button and the pictures of five women, including Nana, appeared on the screen. Reid's heart sank even further. "Meet Gloria Keen, Eleanor Matthews, Beatrice Waters, Maryanne Mallworth, and our most recent victim, Penelope McGee. Each of these women were found dead in their homes by friends or neighbors between eight and eleven o'clock in the morning and were killed between one and four hours before they were found."

"It says here that the COD on all of them was heart attack…" Morgan pointed out.

"Yeah but each heart attack was induced. I spoke to Dr. Donald Mallworth, that's Maryanne's son, who also happens to be the only medical doctor in town therefore the resident ME by default. He found hypodermic needle marks in the exact same spot behind the right ear of all the victims. That combined with obvious signs of forced entry, namely the fact that all their front doors were kicked in and he and Sharif have ruled out natural causes." Garcia explained.

"Do we know what they were injected with?" Hotch asked

"No Sir, it either doesn't register on a tox screen or metabolizes too quickly. Unfortunately neither of those bits of information does much to narrow down the field of possibilities."

"What about relatives? Did all the victims live alone?" Blake asked.

"All but the fourth victim, Maryanne Mallworth lived with her son because she had late-stage Alzheimer's and apparently wouldn't trust anyone else to help her. All the other victims had oodles of extended family but they're spread out all over the country."

That was when they all noticed that Reid, who normally would've postulated at least two or three different theories by now, was silent.

"Reid…anything to add?" Hotch asked

"Guys…I have a um…a confession to make…"

"What is it?" Morgan asked.

"I know one of the victims…Penelope McGee is…was…my grandmother…"

"What?" Morgan asked in surprise.

"You're kidding…" Hotch exclaimed. Reid just shook his head in response.

"Oh my God…" Garcia exclaimed. "Reid…I'm so sorry…" she told him, looking visibly upset.

"Is this the first you're hearing about this?" Hotch asked.

"No…Don, Dr. Mallworth is an old family friend, he called me almost as soon as I got home to tell me and I didn't listen to them but there were messages on my answering machine to suggest he's been trying to get ahold of me all day…" he replied.

"Taking all this into account…Reid…you can't be on this case…you're way too emotionally involved and far too close to this…"

"Hotch I understand that… but she was one of the most important people in the world to me. I need to help figure out who's doing this…I owe her that…" he argued. At the very least. He added to himself.

Hotch could tell that even if he did take Reid off the case, that wouldn't stop him from working it, there was a mix of emotions playing across his face, grief, anger, guilt, and underpinning all of it there was sense of determination. "Alright, but if I get even a hint that you're getting tunnel vision you're done. Are we clear?" he asked.

"Yes sir…" Reid replied.

"Then let's go end this. Wheels up in thirty minutes…"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Mount Bedford

_Rossi: "Honor widows who are widows indeed. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their elders; if anyone does not provide for his own, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." -1Timothy 5:3,4,8" _

Later on, when they were on the plane, the mood was strange. The personal nature of the case hung heavy in the air around them, weighing it down, but nobody would acknowledge it any further, and they avoided using Reid's grandmother's name any more than absolutely necessary.

"Let's start with the most recent victim…" Hotch suggested.

"What gets me is the door… I mean the police report says that she wouldn't usually have locked that door at night, but it was kicked in. If the door wasn't locked then the forced entry was unnecessary." Morgan pointed out.

"She probably started to after the killings started, when the earlier victim's deaths were deemed homicides." Reid suggested.

"But would she have known that?" JJ asked. The first four cases were kept out of the news…"

"In a town as small as Mt. Bedford, media attention is essentially redundant, everyone knows everyone and word travels even faster than something like this would make the evening news."

"Reid you know the town, and at least one of the victims better than anybody and that's going to be a huge help." Hotch told him.

"Well this unsub clearly wants his victims found sooner rather than later, he makes no effort to hide them or even to cover up the forced entry." Blake pointed out.

"Breaking down the front door is ballsy, he's either arrogant or he wants to get caught." Rossi added.

"I'm not so sure about that… The town is tiny but it's also spread out, that's particularly true of the residential areas, it's possible that no one would've seen or heard much if anything."

"So there probably won't be much in terms of witnesses…" Rossi commented.

"But the unsub still clearly wanted in the victims to be found. So how does he make sure of that?" Blake asked.

"The report says that the latest victim was discovered when her friend dropped by to return a casserole dish…" Morgan said.

"Yeah, that would be Dr. Mallworth, he said the same thing to me when I talked to him." Reid replied.

"I don't know when or why this kind of thing became an antiquated concept, but back in the day when you knew someone who either died or lost someone, you would make a casserole for the family…"

"Nana definitely would have done that when Mrs. Mallworth died."

"He was probably stalking her long enough to know that…and that sooner or later he'd bring the dish back. We should take a closer look at the discovery of the other victims and see if there's a pattern in there that will show us how he's targeting them. We should also check out the crime scenes to see if anything there helps us understand the psychopathology." Hotch told them. "When we land, Reid go to your grandmother's house, take Rossi with you, JJ interview the other families, Morgan go see the medical examiner, Blake and I will set up at the Sharif's station."

They all nodded, having been given their marching orders.

The jet landed at a small airport just outside of town and from there the team split up into three different SUVs.

Sharif Conwell was waiting when Hotch, Blake, and JJ arrived at the station. He was a short, wide, muscular man with short black hair and a mustache that reminded Blake of Teddy Roosevelt.

"Sharif Conwell?" Hotch asked.

"Yes sir." The Sharif replied.

"I'm Agent Hotchner, these are Agents Juneau and Blake."

"Thanks for coming… I've been with the department for twenty years…been Sharif for twelve of those, my father was Sharif before me…and I've never seen anything like this, this kind of thing just doesn't usually happen in these parts." He said. "The extended families are arriving by the hour and pretty soon I'll have close to a hundred people breathing down my neck, every one of 'em wanting answers and justice when I don't have either of those things to give them right now."

"Well now that we're here you at least have some help." Hotch replied reassuringly.

"What can you tell us about the overall character of the town?" JJ asked.

"This is a very close-knit, very conservative area…plenty of community events, everybody knows everybody, and many of the families here go back for generations. Neighbors help each other out, take care of their own so to speak, academics are important, most of the adults are heavily involved in the school system even if they don't have kids, church on Sunday, with most of the community events from charity drives to the town festival being run through the church. In a lot of ways it's like stepping back in time sixty to seventy years." He explained, they nodded.

Meanwhile, Morgan was at Dr. Mallworth's office. He was a small old man with graying brown hair, a weathered expression giving the impression that he'd seen too much, and small stormy gray eyes obscured behind thick antique bifocals.

"Dr.?"

"Yes…you are from the FBI I take it?" he asked in a raspy voice which carried with it a thick Scottish accent.

"Yeah, I'm Derek Morgan…"

"Pleased to meet you, though of course I wish it were under different circumstances. Please come in…" The Dr. offered, leading him into the least crowded morgue Morgan had ever seen. Inside, the bodies of several elderly women were lined up on slabs."

"These…Agent Morgan, are your victims. All killed in the exact same fashion and at almost the same time of day."

"Did you know them personally Doctor?"

"This is a small town, we all know each other…but the 4th victim, was my mother, and the fifth…was my best friend."

"I'm sorry…"

"Mother was…ready to go…so much of her was gone already and had been for some while; but Penny…had so much life left in her…it's all so very sad…"

"What can you tell me about who would have done this?"

"He's local…an outsider wouldn't be able to walk down Main Street in this town without being noticed, let alone murder five active pillars of the community. Also he's probably either over fifty years of age or disabled in some way."

"What makes you say that?"

"See these scratches and bruises?" He asked, lifting up one of Penny's arms.

"Defensive wounds…she put up a fight…"

"Indeed… and she's not the only one…they all did…even Mother. For them to be able to do that…his reflexes and or agility is limited, even in the picture of health, women of this age just don't move like twenty somethings or even thirty somethings."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Nana's House

Penny McGee had lived in a massive, almost mansion-like, old farmhouse on top of the hill that had been built by her own great-grandparents in the mid nineteenth century. It had passed through time, changing hands within the family from generation to generation, with few permanent changes aside from necessary repairs and updates since its construction.

Spencer hesitated, standing silently on the massive wooden porch where he had stood so many times before. He knew that he had to, but he didn't want to go inside, because going inside, seeing where she died…that would make it real. He was afraid to meet Rossi's eye, afraid that to let his teammate see just how much all this was getting to him, would get him kicked off the case. He couldn't let that happen because the only way he knew how to lessen the pain, was to help catch her killer.

But since it was Rossi, Reid's silence said even more than words could have.

"You know you don't have to do this right? You can let us handle it…"

"Actually I can't." he replied, then he took a deep breath and walked inside, Rossi followed.

Don had been right, the first two rooms had been destroyed. Granted, Nana had never been a neat freak per se… but on any other occasion, the cluttered mess of antique furnishings, nick knacks, family photos, and electronics from the eighties and nineties, still would have given the impression of organization, that despite the cluttered appearance of the arrangement, everything was in its proper place. This was just chaos.

The vase Reid's grandfather had brought back from China sixty years previously as an anniversary present, lay shattered on the living room floor with dried blood on some of the jagged edges, as though Nana had swung it at her attacker. The wooden floor had fresh scratches and scuff marks in it to suggest that this was indeed where the assault had taken place. Reid walked the perimeter of the room, taking in every detail, trying to form a more exact picture of what exactly had happened.

"So…what was she like…your grandmother?"

Reid thought about that for a second. "The best way I can describe her is as a woman of contradictions… she was gentle but strong, nurturing and yet firm… loving, but she was strict with us… you always hear how grandparents spoil the kids but… my cousins and I never got away with anything when she was around. Her punishments were inventive, not necessarily designed to fit the crime but to teach the exact principle in question… She never stayed mad at us for long no matter what we did, but her forgiving you wasn't going to get you a lighter sentence…"

"Sounds like a smart lady…"

"Yeah…." Reid replied, trailing off into his own thoughts as he stared at the grand piano in the living room, the book of sheet music that belonged to it lay open and tattered on the floor a few feet away.

"This scene is so chaotic that we may not be able to figure out exactly what happened…"

"Music…"

"What was that?" Rossi asked.

"Nana loved music, she would always play the same mixed tape of her favorite songs while she did housework… is there a tape in the stereo?"

"Yeah…" Rossi said, opening the tape player on the old stereo.

"Push play… Nana had the same routine every morning, we can tell what she was doing by what song the tape is on…"

Rossi obeyed, and Spencer listened intently as a familiar tune began to play.

_"Dance then…wherever you may be, for I am the Lord of the Dance said He! And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I'll lead you all in the dance said He!" _

"Lord of the Dance, which means…she was making breakfast…" Reid observed, stalking off to the kitchen.

Rossi followed and opened a pan on the stove to reveal unfinished sausage gravy.

"Looks like she was planning on biscuits…."

"Yeah… hers were the best…" He replied, walking back into the living room.

"What's up?" Rossi asked, following him.

Reid just shook his head. "I…I need a minute…"

"Take it…I understand…"

"I'm alright…" Reid told him unconvincingly.

Rossi could see his friend's hands shaking in grief and rage. He took a quick glance around the room at the off-white walls covered in three generations of family photos, children's and grandchildren's school photos from kindergarten through graduation and group shots for each year marked the long passage of time. Clearly family had meant the world to this woman.

His eyes moved back to Reid, who was trying and failing to hide the fact that he was on the edge of tears.

"No you're not…and no one expects you to be…"

"But if I'm not…then I can't help find out who did this…"

"Maybe not in the usual way, but you still knew her better than we do, you knew her as a living person, her behavior, her personality… that's something that's hard to gather just from the material possessions' she left behind…"

"She was right…" Reid whispered sadly.

"Right about what?" Rossi asked.

"Every time I'd come up here for the last ten years or so…which wasn't nearly often enough, she'd get on my case about…how important family is and how, one day she wasn't going to be here…now she's gone and the last time I saw her alive…was almost a year ago." He replied, crying silently.

"Then let's find out who killed her." Rossi said, putting a hand on Reid's shoulder. "She was making breakfast…"

"The doorbell rings…"

"And she goes to the door…but she doesn't let him in, she backs away from the door?"

"She has to because otherwise the struggle wouldn't have spread to the living room…" Spencer added.

"So she lets this guy further into the house than she wants to…and then he pulls a needle on her, she struggles but he manages to inject her anyway and then leaves her to die…the question is…who was he?"

"There really wasn't much in the way of forensic evidence…"

"I hate to ask this, but did she have any enemies…?" Rossi asked.

"No…"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Dwight

A few hours after the BAU had arrived in town, they came back together at the Sharif's station to share what they had learned. They sat around a U shaped grouping of rectangular tables facing a long set of dry erase boards with all the evidence and crime scene photos so far.

"So we have a case with five victims, none of whom had any clear enemies, killed by someone who left no forensic evidence behind."

"Other than being killed by the same offender, what else do the victims have in common?" JJ asked.

"They were all elderly women…" Morgan replied.

"They all lived the vast majority of their lives in this town…" Blake added.

"They were all mothers, and all of them except for Mrs. Mallworth were also grandmothers." Rossi added. "When Reid and I went over to Mrs. McGee's house, there were family photos almost covering the walls, maybe the Unsub is keying in on how important family is to these women. That could be what sparks his rage."

"If that's the case then we all know the odds there…the victims are probably surrogates for a mother or grandmother who abused him or wronged him in some severe way." Blake commented.

They called Garcia.

"Office of the information fairy how may I help you?"

"Garcia we think the victims maybe surrogates for someone who abused this Unsub… we need you to compile a list of men from the area between twenty-five and sixty who have any of the usual indicators of abuse or neglect, questionable medical histories, sealed juvenile records, poor grades, they might have even grown up in foster-care or an orphanage or been placed with extended family." Hotch told her.

They could hear her typing away at her keyboard.

"That gets us forty names sir and the vast majority aren't local anymore…only one of these people lives in Mt. Bedford now…"

"Who is it Garcia?"

"Martin Dwight…age fifty-eight, grew up in Mt. Bedford. Yikes, his teachers even noted that they thought he was being abused, and when he grew up he left town for our very own Quantico Virginia, where he got married, became a wife-beating scum bag, was accused of spousal abuse six times, and raised two sons. They aren't local to the area but it looks like they got into heaps of trouble. Their Juvy records are sealed but they appear to be pretty extensive… I see a lot of charges against them, but until I unseal the files I can't see exactly what any of them are…"

"That's not a surprise…." Reid commented.

"You know this guy Reid?" Morgan asked.

"No, not him…but I grew up with his sons, they'd come up here to visit their grandparents at the same time my cousins and I would come visit Nana, and the Dwight brothers did everything they could to make our lives, especially mine, miserable…." He replied

"What have you got on the sons Garcia?" Hotch asked.

"Starting with the oldest… meet Jackson Dwight, age thirty-nine… he was a real peace of work, kicked out of elementary school and was sent to military school until 7th grade for anger management issues, the highlight of which was that he tried to stab his gym teacher's eye out with a pencil…numerous citations for bullying, he never maintained anything higher than a C average and yet apparently had an IQ of 195… and get this, he never graduated high school, he was sentenced to Juvenile Detention at the age of seventeen and served four more years in jail starting on his eighteenth birthday for assaulting a minor over the summer between his junior and senior years."

"Guys, Jackson doesn't fit the profile." Reid told them.

"How can you be sure?" Rossi asked.

"Jackson Dwight is a vindictive narcissist prone to cruelty and violence but that's just it… this Unsub's MO doesn't match Jackson's psychopathology at all. These crimes were hands off, non-violent, non-sexual, Jackson would've violated the victims and probably beaten them to death… a potentially natural death being chemically induced isn't his type of methodology."

"What about his younger brother Garcia?"

"His brother Jason, is about the same age as Reid, again we have poor grades…he was never kicked out of school…but he had quite the long disciplinary record and it would appear that he was removed from his father's custody and placed in foster-care when he was twelve for obvious neglect and physical abuse, and that's when things for him go from bad to worse… He dropped out of school early in his junior year, seemed to be in trouble with the law almost every other month, mostly for petty theft of things like food, candy, and beer, I'm also seeing scads of assault charges for fist fights which he pretty much always lost, domestic disturbances, drug possession, and a bunch of underage drinking and DUI charges…he actually has more on his record than his brother but his history doesn't seem to be nearly as violent."

"He fits better except…if it were Jason doing this you'd think that he'd take out his anger and frustration on men and closer in age to his father…"

"Jason was in foster-care though, and depending what kind of home he was in, the core of his rage might not be his father at all…he could be his foster-mother…" JJ pointed out.

"Garcia gather everything you can find about both Dwight Brothers and then see if either of them have an alibi for the killings…" Rossi ordered.

"That might take me a little while but I'll hit you back when I have something." She said before hanging up.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Memoirs of Penny

October 14th 1981

Penny McGee and her husband Franklin had just arrived home from a trip to Las Vegas where they had witnessed the birth and met their now six day-old grandson, Spencer. The past nine months had not been easy on their daughter Dianna, she was schizophrenic, as was her father, and had gone off her medication for the sake of her child. Her own mother had been the only one she had allowed to get close enough to help. In some ways it had been a nightmare, but it was over now and she nor Dianna would take a second of it back for anything in the world. Not now that Spencer was here.

Franklin had been distant ever since they'd left from the airport in Vegas, he was too quiet and it worried her. So she climbed up the ladder toward the attic where he did his research as a privately contracted scientist for the navy.

"Frank…? Honey? Are you up here?" she called, but there was no response, actually there was no noise at all beyond a solitary and unfamiliar creaking sound.

She tried to open the door but even though it wasn't locked, it still wouldn't open. When she did manage to open it a crack, she saw that there was a chair pushed in front of it which apparently had been brought up from the dining room. "Well what the devil?" She swore, pushing harder until at last the chair fell over to the side out of the way and she was able to enter the room. When she did, her jaw dropped in horror, her husband was hanging dead in a noose tied over an overhead beam, and her stomach lurched as she realized the source of the creaking sound was the rope at it swung back and forth slightly, with Franklin's feet dangling only about two feet off the ground.

"Lord have Mercy…" she said, making the sign of the cross. Then she saw it, a note scribbled in his handwriting, explaining what she saw before her now, she picked it up and read:

My dearest Penny, if you are reading this, then I have left this world, and you deserve to know why. Right now I'd imagine that you're bewildered, frightened, angry…and I'm truly sorry for that. Even after the voices began to invade my mind, even after I learned why they were there and there was little I could do to free myself from them, I still never imagined writing this letter. But you must imagine the guilt I felt when I learned that I had passed on my mental curse to our beloved daughter. If you should catch her in a moment where you find her of sound mind please tell her also how sorry I am for everything. It's my fault and you both deserved better. You deserved a husband who could be your rock, not the other way around. She deserved a father capable of being there for her, to light up the dark, not cast her into it and damn her to a life of hardship.

As for why it must all end here, the answer is as simple as it is complicated…I am weak. It was bad enough when the psychologist told us that I was likely the source of Dianna's suffering. Imagine the guilt I felt when we greeted that beautiful child, so tiny, so trusting, so full of potential… but all I could think about was whether or not I have ruined his life as well. I know what I have now done has hurt you, but I simply could not bear the weight of that guilt any longer. You have stood by me, supported me, fought for me, at times you protected me from myself. Despite my disease you have always given me wings to fly and I've loved you for it. So this is Goodbye, Penny my dearest friend, my light, my love, my heart and my song, please do not share this letter with Dianna or Spencer, this is not their fault and I should think that I would roll in my grave if they ever thought so, they, you, Megan, the twins, Junior, and Timothy, need only understand that I love you all so very much. I'm sorry.

By the time she finished reading it, she could barely see through her own tears and her hands shaking, she called 911 to report her husband's suicide.

June 6th 1987

The school year had ended and Penny now had her four grandsons all to herself for the summer. She was looking through all their yearbooks trying to get a sense of their lives since she had seen them last at Christmas, but one of them, Spencer, who had spent the school year in second grade instead of kindergarten, was holding back, apparently not wanting her to look at his.

"Spencer, honey… can I see your yearbook?" she asked.

The little boy shook his head. He stood there hugging it defensively, gripping onto it hard as though his life depended on keeping it from her.

"Spencer…let me see…" she ordered, giving him a look that allowed no refusal from a timid five year-old boy. He walked over to her and handed in over.

As soon as she opened it, she realized why he hadn't wanted her to see it. There wasn't a single signature from any of the other children, not one classmate…only teachers…

"Spencer…you didn't want any of your classmates to sign it?"

"I tried but they all hate me…I don't have any friends…" he admitted sadly.

"I don't understand how that could be…" she said.

"You're my Nana, you're supposed to love me. All the kids in my class are two or three years older than me. They only bother to talk to me at all when they get a chance to trip me or kick sand or pebbles in my face…." He explained, his large brown eyes pleaded with not to continue this conversation any further.

She looked back at him sympathetically, took each of his small hands in hers and pulled him directly in front of the low-riding sofa where she sat, so that he was facing her directly and at his own eye-level.

"Spencer listen to me. Those kids in your class who were mean to you…they're trolls and they're missing out. They're just jealous and mean and petty. I look at you and I see a wonderful little person who's going to do amazing things. Don't you _ever _let the likes of them convince you to be less than who you are. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said…"

"Who's Eleanor Roosevelt?" he interrupted

"Her husband was our president before you were born… anyway, she said once, that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. So please Spencer, I know it's hard, but don't give it. Do you understand?" she asked.

The little boy nodded.

July 4th 1992

The weather was perfect, there wasn't a cloud in the sky but there was a nice breeze that made eighty degrees feel like seventy, especially in the shade of the willows and sycamores that dotted Penelope McGee's four acres of land.

It was a lazy afternoon and the now ten year-old Spencer found himself reading under a two-hundred year-old sycamore, with a pile of books on each side of him. One pile was for the books he had already finished and the other was for the books he hadn't gotten to yet.

But he hadn't been there more than thirty minutes when suddenly the area around him got dark. He looked up to see a boy who was several years older and at least twice his size standing in front of him.

"Whatchya reading there ya little freak?" The boy asked mockingly.

"Hello Jack…"

"You're a little freak, you know that Reid?" Jack taunted, taking the book right out of Spencer's hands. "I mean what kind of ten year old reads _To Kill a Mockingbird _anyway?"

"I do…"

"It's not normal." Jack replied sharply.

"Yeah it ain't normal!" Jacks brother, Jason, chimed in as he came up on the side.

"So what?" Spencer asked.

"I bet yer not as smart as they're sayin anyway… in fact yer so dumb… you probly think that three times four is twelve…" Jason teased

"Um…three times four is twelve…" Spencer corrected.

"Yeah, three times four is twelve ya dumbass!" Jack yelled, elbowing his brother in the ribs. "Anyway, the world isn't always so kind to folks who aren't normal…so today I'm gonna give you a lesson in what the future holds and give my brother here a birthday present at the same time." Jack explained, cracking his knuckles.

Spencer's eyes widened as the older boy grabbed him, tied him by his wrists with his arms over his head and hoisted the younger boy above the ground, hanging him from a tree branch. Then he put a blindfold on Jason, turned him around three times and handed him a baseball bat.

From there, the boys took turns using Spencer for a human piñata. The game went on for over an hour until Nana, having noticed that Spencer hadn't come back inside for lunch, came running to break it up.

"You little PIGS! Why don't you pick on somebody your own size? Did nobody ever teach you any manners? Your granddad's gonna hear about this!"

She chased the Dwight brothers away, promising to tell their grandparents what had transpired.

She cut Spencer out of the tree with gardening sheers, caught him in her arms and carried him back to the house.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Profile

Present Day.

All twelve of the Sharif's Department's officers were assembled, waiting intently, for the BAU to give them some insight into who was behind all of this. Everyone in town was on edge, wondering who was next, and the police didn't have any answers.

A few seconds later, Hotch began the briefing.

"The Unsub or Unknown Subject in this case is a white male between the ages of forty and seventy, because his victims were all elderly and yet managed to fight their attacker, the younger he is, the more likely it is that his mobility is hindered by a physical disability of some kind." He said.

"This Unsub has walked around freely in this town without raising an alarm, because of this we believe that he is familiar with the area and familiar to the local population. While he might not live here, he may have in his childhood, or spent significant amounts of time with close friends or relatives who do." Morgan continued.

"His victim selection tells us more than just his probable age. The fact that he's targeting women old enough to be his mother or grandmother tells us that he was most likely neglected or abused by a female authority figure in childhood and may even have been removed from his family." JJ added.

"This is not his first brush with the law. We know this because it is exceedingly unlikely for an Unsub to start his criminal behavior at such an old age and the lack of forensic evidence at the crime scenes suggests that he is well aware of law enforcement procedure. He has a long history of criminal infractions, possibly dating all the way back to when he was a juvenile and these have likely increased gradually in violence, focus, and severity over the years. While his intelligence level appears high, we do not believe he is well educated. He most likely never attended college and didn't graduate if he did. The short span of time in which these murders have occurred tells us that he's doing this now because he has the time, he may be on vacation or recently fired from a steady but menial job. The decreasing time between kills points to an escalation that in our experience means he most-likely has a deadline of some kind and is running out of time to gain the confidence needed to face the real target of his rage." Blake continued.

"Warn all single elderly women to lock their doors at night, look to see who it is before opening their doors, double check ID's before letting anyone they don't recognize into their homes, and avoid going out after dark. This Unsub isn't going to hold to any time table, nor will he stop until we find him." Rossi concluded.

Reid chimed in at the last minute, not even looking at the crowd of police officers. "This Unsub seems to be taking advantage of the spread out nature of the town's residential properties, he's counting on the houses being far enough apart that no neighbors can hear his victims struggling or watch him come or go. This is similar to the way a burglar thinks when selecting a target, so while nothing is guaranteed, it would be wise for possible victims to put up motion lights or signs indicating a surveillance or security system and set up motion activated recordings of large, barking dogs if they do not own guard dogs of their own. These are all measures known to decrease the risk of home invasion and may be enough to get this Unsub to leave a possible victim in peace and go looking for an easier target. The more the Unsub is forced to adapt, the more rattled he is likely to become, and the greater chance that he will make a mistake. Thank you." He elaborated, and the briefing ended.

Afterward, Reid exited the Sharif's station for some fresh air. He was finding it harder and harder to fight the urge to knock down every door in this town and arrest every son or grandson who fit the profile. Nana had, had motion lights on the porch, an alarm system, and two redbone coonhounds trained as guard dogs. The very things that should have protected her had failed, now she was taken from him forever and her killer was still at large. The Unsub had found a way to get passed almost all the safety measures they had suggested but how? It was enough to make him want to squeeze the life out of this guy with his bare hands. He kicked the brick wall in frustration. What was it they were missing?


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Filial Piety

After Reid had been outside long enough for the others to notice his absence, Morgan came looking for him.

He found his friend just outside the front door, pacing, Morgan couldn't tell if he was angry or frustrated or sad, or all of the above…

"Reid…you ok kid?" He asked.

"Does it look like it Morgan?" Reid asked sharply.

"No, frankly you look pissed…what's wrong?" He asked, although he had a feeling that he already knew.

"We're still missing something… My Grandmother had every precaution we suggested in there, in place and the Unsub still got to her, he's getting around all of these things…we just don't know how… so far the only thing aside from age and gender that seems to decide who he targets is whether or not he can get them alone…almost all the victims were retired and lived alone… The one who didn't live alone, was alone when she was attacked…"

"Yeah…that's true…"

"I just wish I'd been there…"

"Reid, there's no way you could've known this was gonna happen…much less to your own grandmother…"

"If I'd been there…she'd most likely still be alive…"

The more Reid said, the more Morgan was starting to grasp what was really going on inside his head…

"Reid. Blaming yourself isn't gonna bring her back…you know that…"

"I know but…thiry-two years of her trying to tell us and I never listened…"

"Never listened to what?" He asked.

"Nana always, always, tried to drum into our heads how important family was, how if we didn't stick together then what kind of a family was that? That's why she insisted that my cousins and I came up here every year, we grew up in three different states, in three different regions of the country, if she hadn't had us come we'd probably barely know each other…" he explained.

"So that makes this your fault?" Morgan asked, confused about how he could think something like that.

"No, the fact that she was alone here does, we were really close when I was a kid, actually she was like a second mother to all of us, my cousins and I, when we were younger….now she's gone…if I had been here, if any of us had been here she probably wouldn't be. On top of that, our best subject was the bane of my existence twenty years ago…Jason and jack both hated me…if either of them turns out to be our unsub then that's why she was targeted…"

"If it turns out that it was one of them… Reid, even if that were true, you know there's more to it than that. He has serious issues, and we don't know that for sure, not yet anyway. As for not being here, well…that still doesn't make it your fault. You guys used to come here every chance you got, but you grew up Reid, you guys grew up and you've got your own lives now…that doesn't mean she was any less important to you…she knows that Reid…you're not responsible for this…you're angry right now and you're right to be, all these what if's are running through your head at a mile a minute, trying to figure out a scenario in which she's still alive…but she's gone Reid…she's gone…and there is nothing you can do to change it now, there's nothing any of us can do… If we could we would, you know that…but what we can do is find the bastard who did this and make sure they can't do it again to somebody else." Morgan told him.

"It's just not fair, you know? Why her? She was one of the nicest people I've ever known."

"Believe me, I know, I've been there…when my dad got shot…so believe me when I tell you that blaming yourself isn't going to get you any closer to getting justice for her and the other victims…"

"Morgan, all we have is a profile…and if this Unsub is older, that's a whole other can of worms… you'd be shocked at what didn't count as child abuse fifty or more years ago…trust me, to say that parents could get away with a lot of things that could create a future unsub, is an understatement. There are probably a lot of people whose histories fit the profile with no records we can find to suggest it…" Reid lamented sullenly.

"Reid, I don't have all the answers, but I do know this, if we're going to catch this guy, we do it by doing what we do best, let his behavior speak for itself and we use it to get inside the bastard's head and track him down… so let's get it done…"

"You're right…it's just…I knew this wasn't going to be easy…but I never imagined it would be this hard…"

"I know…come on kid, we have work to do…"


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Voices beyond the Grave

An hour after Reid's conversation with Morgan, Hotch had sent him alone, to get some new information from Dr. Mallworth.

Back at the station however, Hotch had asked to speak to Morgan alone.

"What's going on Hotch…?" Morgan asked.

"It's about Reid, I know we usually have a moratorium on profiling our own teammates, but…given the circumstances it's important for me to know what kind of headspace he's in." Hotch told him.

"Ok but…then why not just talk to him yourself?" Morgan asked.

"My position as the leader of this team makes that difficult. If I asked him how he was doing with all of this, he'd only see it as an assessment of whether or not he can continue his involvement in this case. I need an honest answer, but the truth is that I'm probably not going to get it by asking him directly. He's a profiler and he can outsmart any of us if he wants to."

"I don't think you should take him off the case. He's angry, he's frustrated…a part of him blames himself for this…and I would not want to be this Unsub when Reid finally gets within shooting distance of him… But he hasn't lost objectivity…"

"You know that for sure?" Hotch asked.

"Yes." Morgan replied confidently.

"How do you know?"

"Because if he was losing it, he'd have jumped to the conclusion that one of the two brothers we had Garcia looked at was the Unsub, he knew right away that at least one of them didn't fit the profile and said so, even though they both apparently hated them and I get the distinct impression it was mutual. If he was losing focus he wouldn't have been clear headed enough to do that. He clearly wants to get this guy, probably as much as you wanted to get Foiet, but the right guy… Hotch, when somebody came after your family and you made that son of a bitch pay, It didn't negatively affect your abilities, if anything it just made you more focused. We all defended you with Strauss…because she was seeing something that wasn't there, the way I see it, Reid's still on his game and until he's not, I'm not going to be the one to suggest otherwise."

Hotch nodded. He knew that he was being just a little hypocritical, considering that he'd stayed on the case with the man who killed his wife five years previously.

"Ok, I won't take him off the case, not yet anyway." Hotch said.

Meanwhile, at Dr. Mallworth's office, Reid was standing alone in the morgue room, staring sadly at his grandmother's body. He wasn't sure what to think or feel, it just didn't make any sense, for her to be dead, as much as he knew it, he couldn't wrap his head around it. There was a part of him that couldn't quite comprehend how the world kept turning without her in it. Suddenly he heard a noise and spun around to see Dr. Mallworth, who he knew as Don, standing just past the doorway of the crowded, undersized room.

"O-oh…Hi…" he said.

"Hello Spencer…" Don replied in his thick, unmistakable Scottish accent. He moved in and hugged the younger man. "I'm so sorry my boy…"

"Thank you…I just…can't believe it…"

"Nor could I…but…life must go on…yours, and mine… and any information I can provide to help catch this bastard, I shall…that is of course why you're here…"

"Did you find anything new?" He asked.

"Yes, in your grandmother's personal effects…the ones sheriff Conwell had the forensic team bag for evidence, the things found closest to her body…" Don answered, pulling a large, plastic evidence bag with a large, well-worn, black, leather-bound book inside, out of the drawer. "Do you recognize this?"

"Is that Nana's Bible?" Reid asked.

"Yes it is…as you know, it contains an accurate family record, stretching from her great-grandparents to your own birth. That however, is not what was so interesting about it…what is, is what she wrote on the empty pages in the back, shortly before she died."

Don removed the old bible from the evidence bag and Reid put on a pair of gloves so he could see for himself what Don had found.

The pages were thin, rough, and weathered by time and water damage. The whole bible looked as though it had seen better days, and seen more than its fair share.

Reid flipped straight to the once-empty pages at the back, now thick with Nana's flawless, yet barely legible, hand-written script.

"Such beautiful calligraphy…" Don commented, unable to contain himself.

"Easy for you to say…" Spencer replied. "You're not trying to read it."

"I know this is difficult for you right now, but be a bit more patient, with her at least, if no one else. She was from an earlier time, a time in which every young woman of breeding was taught calligraphy, and old habits die hard, she may not have had much time and this… was as quick and natural for her as shorthand is for you." Don advised. "Calm yourself, abandon your frustration, and take another look."

He did.

_"__If you are reading this, then I have been killed. Nothing is as it seems. Things are not what they appear. As you'll soon see, where guilt is plain to see, there is innocence, where there is innocence, guilt lurks below the surface. Question those who keep the secret history. The root of all this, the apple falls not far from the tree." _He read aloud.

"Well that was rather mysterious…" Don said when Reid had finished.

"It's a riddle, she knew she was about to be targeted, and by who… she told us cryptically because she didn't want the real message here to fall into the wrong hands." He realized.

"Well then I can't think of anybody better suited to figure it out…"


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Secrets

Several hours later, in the early afternoon, Reid had written his grandmother's last note out on one of the glass case boards in the station. He was pacing silently, trying to figure out what it meant.

He was so focused that he barely noticed when Blake came in to see how things were going.

"Are you still working on that riddle?" She asked.

"Alex, this means that my grandmother knew who the Unsub was, and that she was his next victim, probably even why all this is happening, she gave us answers here, I just don't know yet what they are…"

"You mean aside from the fact that she _knew _that someone was after her, who that person was, and why? We didn't know that before…" Blake replied.

"Where guilt is plain to see there is innocence, where there is innocence, guilt lurks below the surface…" He recited. "She's clearly saying that our Unsub isn't going to be someone who we'd easily suspect…"

"Right, and our suspects right now are the Dwight brothers, especially Jason… Now I know you guys weren't exactly friends, but did either of them have an actual reason to want your grandmother dead?" Blake asked.

"She was the reason Jack was placed in juvy and then did jail time after he came of age, that assult charge against a minor…well…he and Jason, used me for a human piñata… they hung me from a tree and beat me with sticks…and Nana was furious…if it was Jason, actually even if it isn't… he might see her as the reason his brother was taken away…" Reid explained.

"Why the hell were people so inventively cruel to you when you were younger?" Blake asked, well aware that, that was far from being the only such incident in Reid's childhood.

"I don't know, I guess I used to bring out the worst in people…"

"Apparently, and you're right, that's still a possibility, but if she took whatever time she did have, to leave a message saying otherwise, maybe we should widen our search a little… What about the rest of the message…?"

"Question those who keep the secret history, the root of all this, the apple falls not far from the tree." He read.

"Well… the apple doesn't fall far from the tree is an expression usual denoting the similarity between someone and their descendants…the root of all this, meaning that the source, the reason behind the killings has to do with that somehow…and the secret history could refer to something from the past that most people don't know about, or might be incorrect about what actually happened…"

"Yeah but…what about, and who knows the whole truth?" he asked, partly to himself.

"It has to be someone she trusted with absolute confidence, someone she was sure wouldn't say anything about it until they absolutely had to, to help catch her killer."

"But outside the family, I have no idea who that would be, Don, maybe… but he didn't seem to have a clue what she was talking about." Reid said.

"Is there any significance to where she left the note in the first place?"

"In her Bible? My grandmother was a very religious woman, that could mean something, or it might not mean anything except that's what she had on hand when she decided to write it…"

"Well, she took the time to make sure the note was left somewhere, where it would be found, but by the right people…so, one would think that the location she chose would be a clue in itself…" Blake suggested.

"There's one way to find out…" He said, as he headed out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, Reid approached the imposing, solid oak, double doors of St. Anne's Orthodox Church, where his grandmother had spent almost every Sunday morning of her life. He lingered, feeling strangely like an intruder. Nana had tried to share this part of their heritage with her grandchildren, bring him and his cousins along with her when they stayed with her over the summer, but as soon as they'd grown old enough to be left at the house by themselves the choice had become theirs. Actually, that had been his only personal exposure to religion at all, at least when he was growing up.

He knocked.

A few seconds later, the door opened and a man in his fifties, wearing an ankle length black robe, poked his head out. Once he saw Reid standing outside, he pulled the door the rest of the way open. He was a tall man, roughly twenty years older than Reid, with a full head of strawberry blond hair which was starting to turn a yellowish gray. His blue eyes searched Reid's, trying to gain a sense of what had brought him to the door of the church.

"Welcome, I am Father Casmir, what brings you here?"

"I'm an FBI agent and my grandmother was one of the women who was killed recently. She left a message among her personal things that, makes me think someone here may have a clue about who killed her, or why…" Reid explained.

"I'd be more than happy to assist, please come in…." Father Casmir replied, stepping to the side of the doorway.

Reid entered.

Like all churches of its kind, this one was built with an eastward orientation, so that the parishioners faced in the direction of Jerusalem on Sunday, and was adorned with Icons depicting the saints, the angels, and stories out of the bible, in the flat-looking, pre-renaissance style of byzantine art.

Another set of heavy, oak doors, flanked by columns reaching to the ceiling led the way to the sanctuary. On either side was a stone pedestal with a shallow metal dish filled with sand and golden candles. Reid noticed that five of them were lit, two in one dish, three in the other.

"Oh I lit those, and they'll remain lit until our community is safe again and there is justice for our departed sisters, your grandmother included, and their families." Father Casmir replied, as though he had heard Reid ask the question in his mind. "I hope I'm not prying too much here but… who was your grandmother and did she give you any hints in the message you spoke of regarding what this is about?"

"Her name was Penelope McGee, and all she said was to ask those who know the secret history and something about how an apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Reid answered.

Father Casmir didn't seem surprised, if anything it seemed as though Reid had just told him everything he needed to know. Reid was starting to find the priest's almost otherworldly sense of knowing a little unnerving.

"You've come to the right place, but it's not me you need to talk to, you should speak to my father…"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Father Serge

Father Casmir's father was a retired priest who had served the same parish until his son had taken over twenty years ago. He appeared to be in his nineties and despite retirement, still lived with his son, in the residence on the church grounds.

Casmir led Reid there calmly and then simply left the two of them alone without another word.

The house was small, with thick, clay walls, and high, vaulted ceilings with the same oak that the church doors were made of. They sat facing one another at the small, round, wooden kitchen table.

"What would you like to know…?" Serge asked.

"Question those who keep the secret history, does the phrase 'secret history' mean anything to you, in regards to my grandmother, Penelope McGee? You did know her, correct? Reid asked.

"Of course I knew her, I was the priest serving this parish when she first moved to this town after her own grandfather died. As for the secret history…that's referring to a specific event…she never told anybody the truth about it except me, not the whole truth anyway…granted she even learned that things aren't always what they appear to be…and it was terrible either way…."

"Um sir… I don't understand…"

"Thirty-two years ago, your grandmother climbed up to her attic to find your grandfather dead…"

"I know that much, I was only a few days old but I've heard the story… Nana said he had a stroke…"

"He didn't suffer a stroke…he hung himself…" The retired priest replied with a serious sincerity that told Reid he was telling the truth.

"My grandfather…committed suicide…?" Reid asked in shock.

"Yes…and no… he did hang himself and he did leave a note… but if you keep digging, you'll soon find that it was by no means that simple…"

"What do you mean?" Reid asked.

"Look, I'm not even sure that I have all the answers but I do know this, what is written in that note is a lie, an excuse, what he wrote has nothing to do his death, he was given very little choice but to hang himself. He did so to protect his family, if anything about that note is the truth, it is this… he did it for all of you. Your Grandmother came to see me after she found him, she was terrified, but underneath the shock, she made it clear that she didn't believe that he had killed himself, and his autopsy, which, since he was a member of my congregation I was required to be present for, it was determined that although he did hang himself, the hanging wasn't what killed him, Dr. Mallworth ran a toxicology-screen after that, and though I wasn't privy to the results that came back, I do know that he was poisoned before the rope he used was thrown over the beam."

"But if he was poisoned, then that means he didn't commit suicide, he was murdered. He wouldn't poison and then hang himself, it's redundant. But it's also a redundancy in the MO, and assuming it's the same offender, it also means there's been a shift in victimology…" Reid said, thinking aloud.

"Not as much of a shift as you think, your grandfather hung himself by his own choice, that wasn't his killer's doing. He was backed into a corner, he knew he was dying so he made it look as though he killed himself…"

"But why would he do that?" Reid asked.

"To keep your grandmother from questioning how and why he died, to keep her, and all of you safe from the reason he was killed in the first place. Obviously it didn't work, Dr. Mallworth discovered his true cause of death, told Penny, and she found out the rest… I wish I knew what got him killed, but I don't, other than he knew secrets, that if made public, were more than worth killing over."

"If they were killed by the same person, then the Unsub is tying up loose ends…"

"It's possible…"

"I need to know what kind of secrets my grandfather had access to, do you at least know where that information might be found?" Reid asked.

"He didn't share that information with me, but he did say that he liked to hoard important paperwork in the attic, which as you probably already know, is where his lab used to be." The old man replied.

"Thank you…" Reid replied.

"You are welcome… and, we of course, can help you when the time comes to make the funeral arrangements… if you have questions, if you just want to talk, well… you know where to find me…" The old man told him. "But…after you catch the person who I doing this…"

"I haven't even called the rest of our family yet, Dr. Mallworth told me…"

"Perhaps, ask him to make the rest of the calls too…"


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Skeletons in the Closet

Reid had left the church and gone straight back to Don's office. For what he realized was probably the first time in his life, he was angry with Don. This man had been his grandmother's best friend, his own godfather, a surrogate in many ways for the grandfather he had never known. How could he have not only kept something of this magnitude a secret, but then played dumb and claimed to have no idea what Spencer was talking about? He swung the door open, stalked hurriedly inside and let it slam behind him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

"Why didn't I tell you, what exactly?" Don asked.

"That you knew what Nana meant? That Granddad was murdered too?"

"I take it you spoke to Serge? Possibly Casmir as well?" Don asked.

"Yes, they told me everything, everything they knew anyway…I know that Granddad was poisoned just after I was born, but he wanted to hide whatever got him killed so he hung himself and left a note to make it look like suicide…" Reid explained.

"Spencer, there are still many things you clearly don't understand…not that it's your fault, Penny and Franklin did everything they could to shelter your mother and her siblings, and as a result, you kids know none of this…"

"Then tell me…"

"This is complicated, but first you need to understand, that even though your grandfather was indeed a paranoid schizophrenic, like your mother, there were times when his paranoia was far from unfounded…"

"What do you mean?"

"The next thing you need to understand, is your own heritage… as you might have guessed already from your grandmother's love of Gaelic folk songs, and your mother's maiden name, one fourth of your family, is Scottish, your grandfather was the son of a pair of Scottish immigrants who came here, as did so many in the early twentieth century, for a better life. On your grandmother's side, she came over as a very young child from Lithuania, her own parents and grandparents were Tsarist Russians, and die-hard Orthodox Christians, they fled to Lithuania in 1918, before it became impossible to leave the country, and before the Bolsheviks solidified their hold on power. Had they remained any longer, they would most likely have been slaughtered for either their religious views or their staunch support of the Romanovs… they were safe in Lithuania until 1939 when it became clear that it too, was going to be absorbed into the Soviet Union… Your mother landed here with her parents, and lived in the house you knew, with her own great-grandparents who had come here years before that."

"Ok but, what does that have to do with what's happening now?"

"I'm getting to that…" Don replied. "Keep in mind that this was going on during the cold war… back when people from Soviet Eastern Europe were subject to the same mistrust and scrutiny, that Muslims in this country have experienced since 9/11, imagine a mentally unstable but brilliant scientist, contracted to the US Navy, taking a young woman born in Lithuania as his bride…"

"That didn't go over well, did it...?" Spencer asked.

"Well no, the problems actually began much later than one would expect… but no… your grandfather, as I know you are already aware, was a paranoid schizophrenic, and not unlike your mother, he was mistrustful of the government. The navy was the one exception, probably because he had served among them during WWII and Korea, maybe because despite his mental instability they respected him for his work and treated him like an equal… I don't know. What I do know, is that despite your grandmother's heritage, he never imagined that his chosen line of work would bring and danger to his family, until it was. Everything was fine, until he questioned what his research was being used for… there was one colleague of his in particular, though I don't know his name… who claimed that he was selling his research and other sensitive information to the Soviets through your grandmother."

"But that's ridiculous…"

"I agree, it was quite obviously complete rubbish, which is why they were found innocent when brought before the Un-American Activities Committee… the co-worker who had brought the charges though, never gave up the idea that your grandfather was a spy…" Don continued.

"Do you think he was delusional?" Reid asked.

"Probably… though whether he actually suffered from a delusional disorder, or was simply swept up by the fear and extreme 'us against them' mentality of that time is hard to say…"

"He poisoned Granddad didn't he?" Reid asked.

"Most likely, I know he was convicted of doing so after the Cold War ended, he was dishonorably discharged from the Navy, and sentenced to death for second degree murder and war crimes…executed by lethal injection in 1992…" Don told him.

"If he's dead… then who killed Nana?"

"That's the nagging question…"

"You wouldn't happen to have his name would you Don?"

"I wish I still did… Mother used a lot of my older autopsy and court records for fire-starters last winter, after she obsessed with the idea of making s'mores in the middle of January for some unintelligible reason."

"Well at least now we have an actual place to start…" Reid said, getting up to leave.

But Don stopped him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Spencer… I know that the past few days have been hard for you, and that in the end what I have told you won't make this any easier, but know this, Penny loved you, and your cousins, more than literally anything or anyone else in the world… This should go without saying but… you all have always treated me like family and… I think of you as my own, no matter what, you have family here… don't ever lose sight of that…"


	12. Chapter 12

**Short one guys, sorry but we only have so much left and at least a few more chapters in which to tell it. This seemed like a good place to cut it off. **

Chapter 12: Playing with Fire

As Reid was walking back to the Sharif's station, he called Garcia.

"Well it's about time…give me stuff to do….please, I'm dying of boredom here…"

"Garcia, I need you to search for the name of the last research project my grandfather was involved in…" Reid replied

"Ok, yeah…I can do that…" she replied, typing away. "Ok, I'm seeing a bunch of references to something called Project Firefly…based on harnessing a non-flammable and heat-blind light source to be used by American troops overseas. Reid, what is this about?"

"I think I know what the case is about but I need to see if the pieces fit…"

"Ok, what else do I need find out?"

"Look up the husbands of the other victims and see if any of them worked with my grandfather on Project Firefly or any other projects…"

"Ok, how far back should we be looking?

"Go back to 1940…"

"Reid you are lucky I love you… Ok, yes, actually…every single one of them did… including Mr. Mallworth…"

"Ok, how and when did they die?" Reid asked.

"They all committed suicide… between 1979 and 1982… hanging, jumping off bridges, running their cars off the road…"

"Do any of them besides my grandparents have any ties at all, family or otherwise to countries that were once part of the Soviet Union?"

"Let's see… Gloria's parents were Romanian, Beatrice was from Georgia, Eleanor, was from Estonia, and Maryanne grew up in Scotland but she was born in Ukraine…"

"Is anyone connected with Project firefly still alive?" Reid asked.

"Yes, Ewa Rodgers, the ninety year-old widow of Dr. Lincoln Rodgers, he was a bio-chemist contracted to the US Navy and died in a car crash in December 1980…and James Mason, his father worked on the project, James lost his wife to cancer a few weeks ago and he stopped his anti-anxiety medication."

"Why was he on them?" Reid asked.

"He was in a car accident twenty years ago, he shattered his hip and put his head through the windshield of his 1984 Chevy pickup, he was in a coma for over two weeks and woke up with an extreme and paranoid form of OCD…he's fifty-eight years old and depends on a walker to get around because his hip injury never healed properly…"

"Alright, thank you so much…" Reid said, hanging up.

By then he'd reached the Sheriff's station, he ran inside.

"I know who the Unsub is, and who he's going after next…" He told them. Then he explained all that he had learned about why all of this was really happening.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Right on Target

"James Mason is our Unsub, he's a disabled man in his mid-fifties who grew up in this town being told stories about the scientists who were part of project firefly, and their families. It was, basically, the classic fear of the Cold War, that these men were selling American secrets to the Soviet Union, using their wives, all of whom were either born or raised in Eastern Europe, or at least were the children of immigrants from that part of the world. That… actually wasn't all that unusual for the time period, which is why there was an actual committee formed to determine which accusations of treason and/or espionage were real and which ones were either paranoia or neighbors trying to make each other's lives miserable." Reid explained, he paused to gauge whether he was rambling as he sometimes did, and whether or not the others believed what he was saying. As he carefully gauged their expressions he determined that they were still on track with him so he continued. "Most people who grew up in this environment would be just a little paranoid, but according to public record, James Mason was on a whole other level. He filed numerous complaints against all the victims stating that each one was going to kill him, he also seems, according to a police report from 1978, to think that Project Firefly was meant to design a super virus that would turn everyone it infected into a mindless flesh eating killing machine… He also works for the hospital in the next town over, which gives him access to a whole host of drugs that could easily have been what killed our victims…"

"So basically this guy is crazy and thinks that the stories his dad told him about his co-workers are actually true…" Morgan said.

"So first he poisoned them, but they all killed themselves to try to keep their families safe by stopping them from asking too many questions…" JJ added.

"Exactly, but one of them must have found out what really happened and the others were somehow aware of it…" Reid replied.

"And if this man was aware that these women knew what he had done to their husbands he would be more mistrusting of them than ever…" Hotch added.

"He killed them because he thought that they were going to kill him or worse, so he took a preemptive strike to protect himself from a threat that wasn't there…" Rossi concluded.

"The question is, does he have any more targets?" JJ asked.

Reid was about to answer but Sheriff Conwell beat him to it.

"We have a 911 call dialed from a landline at the home of Ewa Rodgers, she's the right age, there's the sound of a muffled struggle in the background and she isn't verbally responding to the operator…" He told them.

"We're on our way." Hotch replied. "It's time to end this, let's go guys…" He commanded.

Five minutes later, they were at the home of Ewa Rodgers. It was a large, old, two-story, wooden farmhouse, painted white with grass-green shudders on the windows. The door was already busted down, they went inside and spread out, clearing each room on the first floor. The living room and kitchen had broken lamps and plates, even table legs which had apparently been used as weapons, shown by the blood they found on some of them, but they couldn't tell for sure whether Mason had used these things to subdue her, or Ewa had used them to defend herself and had some success.

There didn't seem to be any sign of either of them, anywhere in the house, until finally, Morgan and Reid went to open and clear a small, walk in closet in the upstairs hallway.

Morgan but his hand on the doorknob, Reid stood off to the side with his gun at the ready if the unsub turned out to be inside. Morgan opened the door, but before either of them knew what happened, Morgan was on the floor, having been wacked in the head by a broomstick being wielded by a terrified little old lady wearing a pink dress and a baby-blue knit scarf over her white hair.

"Oh…it's just a bloody fed…sorry bout that… Thought you were that sad, strange little man come to stick a needle in my neck, well I showed him…" She stated, as Reid helped her down from the chair she was standing on.

"Ma'am, did you see which way he went? Because he isn't here…" Morgan asked her, getting to his feet.

"I didn't see where that little bastard took off to, but if I was him, I'd have gone on home to clean myself up. Got him bleeding pretty good with those plates… He'd have a hell of a time getting through town unnoticed looking like that…"

Hotch then ordered the two of them to get Mason's home address from Garcia and head over there.

Morgan dialed her number and put his phone on speaker.

"What can I do? Anything for you my prince…" she answered.

"Babygirl… we need an address for James Mason…" Morgan replied.

"Ha, too easy… the winner of this week's emotionally disturbed nut-job award lives at 6222 West Pine Grove Lane. It's about a mile and a half northwest from your current position…"

They got in one of the SUVs and drove off.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Truth or Consequences

When they got to the address Garcia had given them, sirens still blaring loudly, they heard rustling coming from inside the house, and saw the curtains move. Mason clearly knew they were there.

Like many of the houses in Mt. Bedford, it was an old farmhouse constructed largely of wood and at least a hundred years old.

The two agents stepped onto the porch and Morgan knocked on the door. Again Reid was standing off to the side with his gun out and ready.

"James Mason, FBI, we have a warrant for your arrest!" Morgan yelled.

They waited, but there was no answer, so Morgan kicked the door down and he and Reid began clearing the house, room by room.

It was Reid who found him, trying to pic the pieces of Ewa Rodgers' plates out of the cuts that marred his face, arms, and neck. He was a small, thin man with a full mop of thick, short, brown hair that was starting to turn gray. Reid had seen him around town from time to time, ever since he was a child. He stared into his beady hazel eyes with disgust and hatred on a level he hadn't previously felt for any Unsub. The longer he looked at him, with his gun aimed squarely between the man's eyes, the more a hot stew of grief, pain, and rage swelled within him, threatening to blow up like a volcano. For the first time in his life, he actually wanted to kill someone else, except that wasn't exactly true; because this man wasn't a person to him anymore, just a man-eating wild animal that deserved to be slaughtered. His heart raced and hammered with the intensity of the emotions coursing through him.

On the other side of the room, Mason had lost his balance in surprise and leaned heavily on his walker with one hand. Reid watched with cold, pure hate, as Mason took a gulp in fear, and sweat poured from his forehead down his neck.

"James Mason. You are under arrest for the murders of Gloria Keen, Eleanor Matthews, Beatrice Waters, Maryanne Mallworth, and Penelope McGee, step away from the walker, and put your hands where I can see them!" Reid barked angrily.

Mason obeyed but smiled darkly back at him. Reid searched him for weapons then moved in next to him, putting his gun up to Mason's temple.

"Give me one reason not to kill you." He barked.

Mason Just glared at him.

That's when Morgan came up from behind and stood to the side of Reid, who was still pointing his gun squarely at the Unsub's head.

"I did some bad things…I know I did, and…and you deserve revenge… so why don't you take my mother? That would be fair…" Mason pleaded. "I had to do it…they were gonna kill me…"

"No. They weren't. They weren't going to do anything to you but you killed them anyway, one by one…" Reid backfired, losing his patience. "My grandmother was not going to kill you, you sonofabitch…what did you think she was going to do? Bake your head into one of her pies? She never hurt anyone, not one single person in her entire life. Now she's gone and it's All. Your. Fault."

Reid's finger moved to the trigger. He couldn't wait to shut this creep up.

"Reid! Snap out of it!"

"Morgan he killed my grandmother."

"I know, along with four other people, that's why we need to take him to trial, nail his ass to the wall and put him behind bars where he belongs…maybe even the death penalty, but that's not yours to dish out. Think about it man, is this what she would want?" Morgan spoke calmly, but firmly, desperately trying to keep Reid from going over the edge.

His friend's words jarred Reid for a moment, got him to think for a second. Is this how Nana would have wanted him to respond? He could picture her in his mind, as though she was standing beside him, with her stern, lively blue eyes and dark reddish hair. Then, as if in a dream, he could swear he heard her voice.

_"__Spencer, stop it. Sweetheart you're better than that…you know this isn't the answer, so stop." _

He came to his senses, and lowered his weapon.

Mason, realizing that Reid was no-longer intent on killing him, used the agents' distraction to reach into his pocked for a syringe full of epinephrine, and then, lunged at Reid with it. Two things happened almost instantaneously, Mason tripped over and fell into his own walker, and Morgan shot him in the neck, killing him instantly.

The next twenty minutes seemed to crawl slowly by as the rest of the BAU, along with Sheriff Conwell and Dr. Mallworth responded to Morgan's call for backup. Reid stood there, stunned and exhausted as the sirens blared in the background.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Goodbye's the Saddest Word

It had been a few days since Reid and Morgan had apprehended James Mason, and he had spent that time trying to plan Nana's funeral. The rest of their family had arrived from other parts of the country to pay their respects. Even his mom, who feared flying more than almost anything else, had agreed to get on a plane from Las Vegas to New York in order to say goodbye to her own.

He had told the team he didn't mind if they went home without him before the funeral, but each had shaken their head and assured him that they weren't going anywhere just then. Garcia had even come up from Quantico.

The previous night, the family, including all three of Penny's children and all five of her grandchildren had gathered and stood vigil, alone with her open casket, for several hours as was the traditional practice of her native culture.

The following day, with the sun, shining ironically overhead, Spencer, three of his four cousins, Don, and one of Nana's former students carried her casket, a simple, heavy oak wooden box, decorated only by a single golden, three-barred cross screwed to the center of the lid, from the interior of the sanctuary of St. Anne's to the graveyard behind it, with Casmir at the head of the procession and a crowd of mourners trailing behind.

They stopped and set her down gently on a concrete burial platform beneath the shade of a weeping willow, next to her long dead and beloved husband.

Stories were told, condolences offered, Amazing Grace played on old Scottish bagpipes and Taps followed on bugles. No one dared break the silence over the crowd as they listened to the mournful tunes.

The team gathered around where Spencer stood before the center of the coffin. As the music played, thought about Nana, the gentle, but firm, stubborn, woman who had always been a much-needed reliable constant in his life, she was the person from whom he had sought advice, love, and stability when he had found none elsewhere. To him, she had always seemed so ordinary, yet she harbored secrets that apparently been worth killing over. She had kept the past carefully and securely hidden from her family, that was the part of this that Reid still had trouble wrapping his head around. He knew that she had done it for one very simple reason, to protect them. She had hidden what had happened, and what she must have known could happen, in order to protect him, his cousins, probably his mother and his aunt and uncle too… plausible deniability, the less they knew the better. Except what good was that now that the family had lost the glue which had once held them all together? It seemed to him, that the world as he had known it, had died with her, the world without her in it felt darker and lonelier, but it was where he lived now; though he didn't yet know if he would ever get used to that.

When the music stopped, Tim, Reid's cousin and the eldest of Nana's five grandchildren, got up to the front of the crowd to give the primary eulogy. Tim was a little shorter than Spencer, and on a slightly larger frame, with short, almost buzz-cut brown hair and small blue eyes. When he tried to speak, at first he stumbled over his words, grief stricken, nervous, and on the verge of tears, but finally, by picking one or two familiar faces out of the crowd, he found his voice.

"First off, thank you, everybody for coming, I see a lot of familiar faces, actually I'm pretty sure that the whole town showed up… and I also see a lot of people from out of town that either knew Nana or, knows one or more of us. Here's the thing though, even the people who didn't actually know Nana, did know her, because she was a big part in making all of us, my cousins, my sister, and me, who we all are. She taught us many things, like how to be ourselves, and not care what anybody else had to say about it. That lesson proved particularly useful because, as you are no doubt aware if you're familiar with any of us, our entire family represents some of the biggest nerds you will ever meet."

He paused and the crowd gave a small ripple of laughter.

"She also taught us to never be afraid of standing up for what we believed in, and that if we had the means and the opportunity to help someone, we had the moral responsibility to do so. She didn't teach us these things just with words, actually it was rare she used words at all. This was simply the way she lived her life. The past week and a half or so," He continued, "has been hard, on all of us, though some more than others, and I know that it is far from over. After all, Nana was a huge part of our lives and now we have to adapt to a world in which she won't be here to come bounding down the porch steps as if she's been waiting all day for us to show up, nor on the other end of the phone when we need advice or even just someone to vent to judgment free. Those days are over, but we'll manage, we'll get through this the same way this family always has when it's seemed like the world was crumbling around us, by coming together and being there for each other in spite of the geographic distances and business of life that all too often keeps us divided. This brings me to something else Nana taught us, she tried to drill into all of our heads, almost from day one how important family was, but she also defined it for us, as something much deeper, and far less automatic than blood. She used to say that she didn't care whose DNA recombined with whose, that the people who stand by you without flinching when everything goes to Hell, are your real family. If she were here today she would remind us of that, and to keep those people close and foster our relationships with them because when it all comes down to it they are all we really have… Nana, you were the best grandmother anyone could've asked for, goodbye and we love you…"

Once he was finished and went back to his place in the crowd, everyone lined up, with the family at the front, and each grabbed a single white rose which they placed on the coffin lid, before it was lowered into the ground.

After the funeral, Reid went back to Nana's house, took a walk through the rooms and halls of his childhood home away from home, and peered out the back door at the Hudson River. His mind was flooded by memories of playing with his cousins in the yard and the woods behind it, of coming in to find Nana making dinner, the smell of bacon frying, the sound of her humming some obscure song as she did so… The sweet music coming from the grand piano in the living room, which could often be heard from the second and third floors or even outside the house. He'd come back to get certain things, the contents of his room on the second floor, the box of cassette tapes of Nana's own compositions, some of the books on the shelves… but for now, he took only his memories of the grandmother who had done everything in her power, to keep her family safe, and most of make sure they understood how much she loved them…

_Reid: "Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay." – JRR Tolkien _


End file.
